This is the beginning of 5G network. I remember well the morning of July 18, 2013. That day I left home to go to work with one eye on the status-bar on my mobile. He was a Yoigo customer, and that was the day set for the operator, which was not yet owned by MásMóvil, to activate its 4G antennas . Indeed, around ten in the morning the 4G icon appeared , replacing the previous 3G. Cheers and merriment, I ran to upload a video on YouTube to see if it was true that speed was making my hair mess. “Well … not bad, but I was hoping for something that would change my life a bit more.”
The truth is that my life continued exactly the same with 4G as without it … for a while. In my early childhood, it was difficult for me to understand that the generational leaps of mobile networks are not sprints, but marathons , where patience is the ally and the process is more like a fine rain, imperceptible at the beginning but that seeps into us when we are the long enough exposed to it.
That day in the summer of 2013, 4G seemed like a complement that wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t going to bring me much either. I could not be more wrong: thanks to 4G, services and tools that without it made no sense arrived or were consolidated.
- The stories of Instagram, with its constant loads many videos followed.
- Live broadcasts from Instagram or Periscope.
- Advanced multiplayer and online mobile games, beyond the Sponsored format.
- Social networks like TikTok.
- Download content, such as apps, from anywhere.
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Before 4G, we lived in times when watching a video on YouTube in quality superior to Minecraft meant waiting for the startup to load and then suffering constant stops . The streaming music wasn’t totally continuous either. Multiplayer online games were rather simple, especially turn-based, and linking thirty videos one after the other without pauses, as we do when entering Instagram, was a utopia. Let’s not even talk about watching a 720p series on the bus.
Remembering all this, one is surprised to read opinions that question the need for 5G, arguing that the one offered by 4G is more than enough, or that the increase in prices of smartphones for including this compatibility does not compensate the user. As if its real advantages weren’t going to come in the next few years gradually , as it happened from 2013 with 4G.
The reactions to each advance of this next generation are very reminiscent of The Simpsons’ stupendous homage to Gremlins with Homer’s visit to a sinister old man’s shop :
- 5G will bring speeds that will multiply by 50 those of 4G.
- That is good!
- The compatibility of mobile phones with 5G will make smartphones more expensive.
- That’s bad!
- Latency will drop to 2 milliseconds.
- That is good!
- Until the deployment is complete, transitions between 4G and 5G will drain the battery of the mobile.
- That’s bad!
- We can play streaming video games with the same experience as with fiber.
- That is good!
- The 5G that we are going to see for a while will really be NSA.
- That’s bad!
The landing of 5G has already begun, with Movistar , Orange and Másmóvil firing the starting shot, although as we said, in a kind of vitaminized 4G that uses the current infrastructure, until the specific 5G network infrastructure increases in the next phases. Something that results in that, in practice, the only news that we will be able to notice will be higher download speeds . The fall in latency or the better management of many devices connected to the same antenna will come later.
Looking to the future, and as the antennas for 5G network are activated, we will see the arrival of tools and connectivity of new devices that will give real meaning to this fifth generation. To whet your appetite, we can start thinking about playing Xbox Game Pass games from anywhere and in streaming thanks to agreements such as Samsung and Microsoft , although it will reach any Android.
Denying 5G for its present, and not future, possibilities is like denying 4G in 2013, ignoring the anticipation of streaming video and generalized live broadcasts
Other possibilities: streaming and multiplayer virtual reality , connected and intercommunicated cars to avoid accidents or warn well in advance of unforeseen road events … Hard to imagine, how difficult it must have been for the inventors of the mobile phone to think that their creation would end up in their pocket of every human being and would have the impact it has had on world society.
We will see where we are in 2023. After all, surely no one expected in 2013 that we would have live broadcasts or consume video streaming constantly and from anywhere. And by 2016 it became commonplace.